Comments

I clicked on Michael Fox – it’s amazing to me that guys like him have the __ I don’t know the word for it! __ to include “grassroots” in the names of the groups they organize. ‘Grassroots Institute of Hawaii’! ???

In a less stupefied way, I’m happy to see Ball and Singer are attending/presenting. They will make it more clear to any but the most comatose observer that the exercise lacks legitimacy.

Have to say the cartoon characture of Pinochio with a big green nose pretty well sums up this climate change bunkum. Whopping big green lies about climate. Trolls. This climate change troop represents a sad minority of scientists, politicians, eco-extremists and greedy eco-businesses (and report authors at the IPCC) that don’t have any science and don’t represent the best nterests of Earth, it’s climate, it’s plants animals or man himself.

In fact the only things this ‘movement’ represents is a chip on the shoulder about the wealth and freedoms mans industry has provided humanity (from cave to condo) and of course taxation for Governments to find another reason for tax-grabs hidden under a green cloak which has not one iota effect on climate, changing the tides, the sun, the clouds or the water cycle.

VJ, I realise you prefer to get your ‘science’ from easily digested sound bites (propoganda) off the TV but if you could be bothered to read the Heartland Institutes document you’d find the science in there considerably more solid than the dross you gullibly swallow down.

My “star” is McKitrick, an economist who figures he has nailed the climate scientists to the wall by their b###s because he exposed an error that has long ago been sorted out and corrected. His 15 minutes of fame have come & gone, but he clings to it like a barnacle. Maybe he should focus on his field of expertise and let the climate scientists get on with it.

I get so tired of reading that this scientist or that organisation is funded by ExxonMobil. It is such a cheap shot and automatically assumes that the science is suspect, which is not necessarily, and hardly ever, the case. Besides, ExxonMobil has no real vested interest in this debate. The scarcity of oil/gas (China/India!!!) is such that there will soon be a dramatic shortage (e.g. Peak Oil) and the longer the oil/gas keeps flowing the longer ExxonMobil and other majors will stay in buseness. They don’t care whether the “global warming brigade” will be able to slow down the ever-increasing demand for these fuels by a fraction. Kyoto has minimal effects anyway.

I have worked for Shell and I know from my former (still active) colleagues that being a global warming skeptic is a career damaging position. Management doesn’t tolerate any politically incorrect noises from inside. The same could well be true for ExxonMobil. They are shit scared for their reputation. BP has renamed its company “Beyond Petroleum” to show their “green” image

By the way, Bob Carter, which you mentioned above, is a scientist worth listening to. He is very entertaining, even if you don’t agree with his stance. Here you can watch his video in 4 parts: http://wmbriggs.com/blog/2008/01/27/best-statistical-scientific-talk-on-global-warming/

Funded by, not ExxonMobil, but the Dutch National Research Programme on Global Air Pollution and Climate Change (Project No. 952275) ,

One of their conclusions:

The direct link identified here between changes in 14C production and the occurrence of regional climate change signals in ombrotrophic peat bogs during the Little Ice Age, suggests that solar forcing during this period may well have been an important driving factorfor much of the suggested natural preindustrial temperature variability in the Northern Hemisphere (Lean et al., 1995). Solar activity is estimated to have varied by 0.24% from the Maunder
Minimum to the present time (Lean and Rind, 1998). Given these possible small changes in solar radiative output, amplifying mechanisms may operate to effect climate forcing. The precise nature of these amplifying mechanisms is uncertain, however (van Geel et al., 1998; 1999). Nevertheless, this increasing body of evidence for a link between changes in 14C production and the occurrence of climate change signals in ombrotrophic peat bogs suggests that variations in solar activity may well have been an important factor driving Holocene climate change.

I hope this will keep you busy. Hope you can find the articles for free on internet (try to google it). Did you enjoy Carter’s lecture?

by Cliff D. OLLIER
School of Earth & Geographical Sciences, University of Western Australia Crawley, WA 6009, Australia

Some of his conclusions:

Hansen’s view of ice-sheet ‘collapse’ is untenable. Ice-sheets do not melt from the surface down – only at the edges. Once the edges are lost, further loss depends on the rate of flow of the ice. The rate of flow of ice does not depend on the present climate, but on the amount of ice already accumulated, and that will keep it flowing for a very long time. It is possible that any increase in temperature will cause increased snowfall thereby nourishing the growth of the ice-sheet, not diminishing it. While Hansen concentrates on ice-sheets, evidence of glacier recession is more obvious in alpine glaciers. In many parts of the world glaciers have been receding since 1895 and with increasing pace since 1930. This is the wrong time scale to be associated with Hansen’s hypothesis, and the dates have no counterpart in carbon dioxide records.

There were reports this past summer from the science team doing research in Greenland about the accelerating rate of movement & calving of icebergs etc. The observations included the fact that huge new crevasses have opened up in the glacial sheet, allowing meltwater from the top to flow freely into the mass, some of it reaching the rock below lubricating it and causing the sheet to move faster, so much faster that you can see it moving in places. This is not theoretical or model-based , it’s actually happening and observable. Any increase in mass caused by additional snowfall (which is turn is predicted due to AGW) is more than offset by the continued acceleration of the leading edge skating into the sea.

As for the time frame involved, don’t forget that the industrial revolution got rolling in the late 18th-early 19th century. The heavy fog of Sherlock Holmes’ London was largely due to coal pollution. We tend to think of AGW and CO2 buildup as a 20th century phenomenon, but in the 1800s all factories, trains, steamships, furnaces etc etc were fired by dirty rotten coal. It’s been building up for quite awhile now. Who’s to say when the signs started to show up?

Are you daft man?
It’s ice!
Any ice surface exposed to temperatures above it’s melting point is going to cause it to melt. Unless it has the benefit of altitude, being the top surface does not somehow make it magically exempt.
When it concerns the ice conditions of Greenland, I suggest you pay attention to Dr Konrad Steffen of the University of Colorado, who for the past 18 years has been there and done that!

Abstract. In recent years the variability of the cosmic ray flux has become one of the main issues interpreting cosmogenic elements and especially their connection with climate. In this review, an interdisciplinary team of scientists brings together our knowledge of the evolution and modulation of the cosmic ray flux from its origin in the MilkyWay, during its propagation through the heliosphere, up to its interaction with the Earth’s magnetosphere, resulting, finally, in the production of cosmogenic isotopes in the Earth’ atmosphere. The interpretation of the cosmogenic isotopes and the cosmic ray – cloud connection are also intensively discussed. Finally, we discuss some open questions.

“When the decadal rates of change are integrated over the entire
twentieth century we obtain the figure on the right. Sea level can be seen
to have risen around 170 mm on average over the past century.
The mean rate for the twentieth century calculated in this way is
1.67±0.04 mm/yr. The first half of the century (1904-1953) had a slightly
higher rate (1.91±0.14 mm/yr) in comparison with the second half of the
century (1.42±0.14 mm/yr 1954-2003)”.

Well isn’t that a surprise? Note the decrease in the RATE (!) of sealevel rise in the last 50 years as compared to the first 50 years of the 20th century.

Talking about sealevel rise: What irritates me most are the reports on the imminent disappearance of coral islands like Tuvalu due to sea level rise caused by global warming.

Has anybody ever wondered why Tuvalu, Maladives etc. exist at all? Aren’t
we living in a warm interglacial of the Holocene period which has seen a continuous sea level rise of more than 50 meters in the last 10,000 years which on average equates to some 5 mm/year? Yet our own Green Island (on the Great Barrier reef in Australia) and other coral cays have spontaneously emerged from the waves in that same period and so have all other Pacific coral islands.

It is text book knowledge that corals grow from a substrate that has to be sufficiently shallow for sunlight to penetrate. Corals will continue to grow upwards keeping pace with rising sea levels or subsiding substrates. Subsequent wave action is essential to help these islands stick their nose above the water by the process of coral debris accumulation.

Look at a more recent example of the prersently barren Upolu Cay (also Great Barrier Reef) which entirely consists of coral sand sitting on top of a coral base. Vegetation brought on by wind and bird droppings will further help stabilize these islands like Green Island with its lush vegetation.

Today’s sea level rise is about 2mm/year and is of no threat to – and can even be considered beneficial for - the natural growth of corals. Even if the IPCC worst-case scenario for this century comes true (5 mm/year sea level rise) corals are resilient enough to cope with that.

It is obvious that the Tuvalu residents claim that their islands are about to diappear under water.They hope to extract maximum financial support from the rich western countries who are accused of having caused catastrophic global warming and consequent sea level rise.

If someone has to be blamed for the eventual demise of any of the Pacific or Indian Ocean corals island it is the inhabitants themselves, as they are the ones who are destroying the natural coral habitat by bad fishing practices and other forms of pollution. Indeed with dead corals these islands have no natural mechanism that helps them stay above water.

I knew this was coming. But what about the other articles? Silence of course. It is a typical strategy of the global warming believers to pick firstly on a few mavericks (not for what they say but for who they are or represent) and if that doesn’t work then it is the magazine that is suspect. And if both the magazine and the science appear to be kosher then they can always find a suspicious sponsor that paid the scientist a fee for a lecture here or there. Apparently LIndzen was paid once a $2500 fee for giving a lecture at an event sponsored by a major multi-national. What he actually said is then automaticaly of no importance. Again a case of attacking the messenger rather than the message. Let’s stick to the science and stop this character assassination tactiques. Ad homs are a hallmark of the AGW community,
By the way has anyone of you bothered to listen to Bob Carter? Of course not,or if you did, you probably wouldn’t be able to admit that he makes a lot of sense.

Yes, I have listened, and I have read, too. On the face of it he comes across as one of the more plausible opponents of AGW. But I have also read the other side of his points (argued by numerous other climate scientists) and on balance I don’t think his case holds up. This is not based on just one clip of a presentation, but on individual points as they came up over the last few years. I poked around to find out what others were saying in the literature on the subject & drew my own conclusions about which carried more weight. I can’t quote you chapter & verse of everything I looked at, but I assure you that I approach this material with the open mind of a true sceptic.

Femack, I think you need to get your head round the fact that 19,000 scientists from around the world don’t believe in man-made weather. That compares to 2,500 scientists in the IPCC that purport it does. Man-made warming is a minority sport with little scientific evidence.

When you poke around for evidence you may find a long list of pro-AGW in your google lists. This is because Google have signed up hook-lineand-sinker to AGW and have their own CO2-carbo-offset-fraud system running combined with our public money being thrown by our Governments at propogandising the climate debate online (a search in the UK on Google has never thrown up so many biased results).

My view is there’s a lot of money (taxes) in promoting AGW and not enough in saying the Earths just fine, everythings ok. It’s a crying shame climate has become so perverted by so little evidence and by so few scientists.

need to get your head around the fact that your beloved list has been reduced to practically nothing when all of the fake names, non-scientists, those in non-climate disciplines or with only a passing expertise in climate issues and real scientists who where signed on without their knowledge have been removed. Why do you cling so tenaciously to something so thoroughly discredited? If your cause is the truth, why don’t you cite valid anti-AGW research & data? Oh right, I nearly forgot …

Femack, which scientists of the 19,000 (and growing) are “reduced to practically nothing when all of the fake names, non-scientists, those in non-climate disciplines or with only a passing expertise in climate issues and real scientists who where signed on without their knowledge have been removed..” Can you name 2 on the list that are ‘fake’ and 2 on the list that are ‘non-scientists’ please?

Regarding your next accustaion “cling so tenaciously to something so thoroughly discredited” which facts am I clinging to?

What facts are you clinging to as AGW has no scientific facts backing it! Post an AGW fact for me address please?

Regarding your request to “cite valid anti-AGW research & data” which part of anti-AGW nonesense and bunkum would you like me to cite. Take your pick;

Really, JohnnyB, you are so incredibly naive and immune to critical thought there is no point in trying to discuss this with you. Either you are brand new to the discussion and haven’t seen any of the material that shreds the Oregon Petition, or you are incapable of distinguishing between fact and fantasy. It’s even written up in Wikipedia. Just google it, and start reading. The whole thing is nonsense. You must be the last person on earth to credit it with any kind of validity.

As for your offer to cite research and data supporting your list of “points”, I’d be very surprised if you were able to come up with anything that meets the standard for publication in a recognized scientific journal (op-ed’s and blog posts don’t count). Washed-up retired scientists who supplement their pensions with speaker’s fee for telling people what they want to hear and haven’t published or done any actual research for decades have no case when set up against working climate scientists who have succeeded them and are carrying out leading-edge current research and making huge strides in understanding how climate works.

When you are done reading about the Oregon Petition, Google “Dunning-Kruger Effect”.

Fern, for an ‘open minded’ person you sure have a good line in invective. You say I’m hard-headed but I can divide the BS from the climatic facts after 15yrs in business. And that’s what I’ve seen in the climate debate.
A minority few make a spurious, speculative case for man-made global warming and saying the ‘debate is over.. we must act now’ toward taking actions that will impoverish rich and poor countries with little or no effect on climate. That entire ‘proposition’ is a total fraud.
And I’m surprised that you’re too stupid to see the fallacies in the proposition and too uncaring to see the destructive nature of the proposition.

I am neither stupid nor uncaring. Beware of making comments like that about people whom you have never met and about whom you know next to nothing. 15 years in business? Step aside, sonny – I’ve been around awhile longer than you have, and I can tell you a thing or two about BS. I can also contribute more than a word or two about science, history, and psychology. So mind your manners, you little SOB.

If you want to call somebody stupid about climate science, then go out and review all of the literature in the academic journals, take part in the dialogue about the various drivers and variables, and contribute something to the conversation. Then come back here and call me stupid.

What makes you think that 15 years in business qualifies you to divide the BS from the climatic facts? WTF has business got to do with it? “A minority few make a spurious, speculative case” for AGW – what planet are you living on? In what imaginary universe does the scientific elite, experts in their field, studying the effects of GHGs over the course of a century get described as “a minority few”? Go and educate yourself. I don’t really expect you to do this, of course. You are convinced of your own infallibility on the subject, so no amount of encouragement to seek out the truth is going to make any difference.

And you know what? I don’t really care. I have got my ya ya’s out, and that’s the end of it. Good night.

It is well worth a glance at a person’s credentials and area of research before taking his/her word for it on a given subject. In the case of Michael Fox, it is less interesting to me that he works with these groups (Heartland, Enterprise Institute, “Grass roots association of Hawaii??? whatever) than that he is a retired nuclear physicist and chemistry professor. This means he is not actively doing research, and I have not seen anything cited to suggest that he has published anything peer-reviewed on the subject of AGW – hardly “leading edge.” Other “experts” speaking at the conference have no science background at all except what they read in the CFP& Heartland publications.

There may be a few credible scientists out there – and Bob Carter may be one of them, although I’m not convinced – who still have legitimate doubts about AGW. However, as another poster here has noted, Tim Ball and Fred Singer (Tweedle Dumb & Tweedle Dumber) are going to be there, and anyone who appears in the same dog & pony show with that pair is doing serious damage to his/her reputation!

As for the oil companies, they have to run a very tight ship in the current climate, and it doesn’t surprise me that an employee skeptical of AGW would be discouraged from making public pronouncements. Shell in particular has run some very environmentally responsible adverts, voiced over by Scottish actor John Hannah, of all people (is a Scottish accent reassuring?). But another company is still running ads celebrating the extraction of oil from the tar sands of Alberta, one of the worst CO2 polluters anywhere, not to mention wasted fresh water!

It is not “another company”, it is actually Shell that is the biggest player in the tar sand project in Canada. Thanks to the high oil price the tarsand and oils shales are becoming more and more economic. And the green Canadian government doesn’t stop the tar sand development. Quite hypocritical I must say.

about the current Canadian government!!!! Did I gather correctly that you are writing from Australia? You may not be getting the whole story. The environment is very badly served indeed by the present government, which seems ready to carry the torch of anti-science for the out-going George Dubya in the US.

I pick up Alberta tv on the satellite, and see those ads all the time but try to block them out – I didn’t catch they were for Shell.

Chris, don’t take Femack too seriously. The Canadian government has either swallowed AGW hook line and sinker or (and this would be even worse) has decided to spend vast sums on phoney climate relief schemes to appease the great unwashed and win a few votes.

This could backfire as a vote-getter since Canada (along with most of the world) is currently experiencing one of the coldest winters in decades. That’s not statistically significant but it’s very significant to voters freezing their asses off in -40° weather. The true believers, meanwhile, are praying for a big February thaw to “prove” their point.

Well, Zog (or ZOG - is that an acronym?), as someone who accepts basic AGW theory as very likely, I can provide myself as a conterexample to your slander. I would very much like chillier-than-recent temperatures to persist rather than the projected warming. This isn’t just because I’m nostalgic for the climate of my youth. It would be better for the fish, better for the forest, better for my job security, etc. Furthermore, as a biologist, I’m unlikely to pray for weather. So you’re really off there on what people like me hope for and how we express that hope. What else could you be wrong about? Hmmm. Tell me, when temperatures increase due to the physical nature of the atmosphere, will AGW-deniers hope that humanity can’t do anything about it?

Steve L, you really need to have vote on who prefers warmth to cold. Not only more humans die in winter than in summer (or during heat waves) but most plants (fruit and vedge), animals and organisms grow better in warm periods. I don’t know if because you purport to be green you think you know what’s automatically best for the Earth but judging by your views, like most greens, you haven’t got a clue. In fact my reading of the subject is most greens don’t like man or industrialisation so they side with the plants. But if truth be told the plants don’t like you either. Plants like high CO12 levels and warmer temperatures and animals like it too because that means more plants to eat. In short, greens are total losers.

As for the coldest winter in decades, I’ll wait to see how it fits within the long term statistical trends on a global scale over the course of years.

Here in Ottawa, the Rideau Canal was really, really late opening for skating, and although we have had TONS of snow (damn I’ve got to go out & shovel again!!!!), the daily temperatures have been hovering just a bit above the historical average. This is weather (daily ups & downs), as distinct from climate (long term trends).

Now, regarding our illustrious environment minister, who was also my MPP and MP before redistribution. This guy John Baird put the kybosh on a rapid transit light rail system for Ottawa, and is currently under investigation for influencing the local municipal elections by putting federal funds for that project on hold until after the election. He has zero credibility as a steward of the environment, and was put in the portfolio solely because of his reputation as a neo-conservative pitbull.

The current government of Canada would rather do anything than address the issue of AGW. Their support base is firmly rooted in the oilpatch and vested interests, and whatever lip-service they may pay to the welfare of the planet they are prepared to spout, their whole approach is committed to obfuscation and misinformation.

I think that, based on this post and on some of your past tirades, Chris can readily discern that your interest in the climate question is much more political than scientific. In other words, AGW fantasies are a convenient stick with which to beat “the man”: Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Electricity, big anything that provides us all (even those who are, by Canadian standards, destitute) with a degree of ease and comfort unknown to the general public at any other time in human history. You’re angry at the evil “gummint” even when it bends over backwards to accomodate your position because being angry is what you do best.

No, we are angry at this government because it lies to us about what needs to be done to cut CO2 emissions, because it fails to do its job as the government of Canada, because it embarrasses us on the world stage where its neocon fantasies are recognized as bullshit, and because it panders to deluded denialists like yourself, Zog. You are so gullible.

I can see the flecks of foam falling from your virtual lips - a clear case of the recently identified affliction - warmist rage syndrome (WRS). Not only can it lead to aneurysm, deep depression and anti-social behavior, it causes the afflicted to forget everthing they ever learned about basic scientific principles. Pity.

VJ, using Google isn’t a good idea as they’ve sold-up/out to climate warming theory with their Google-Carbon-Con credits.. any search on global warming science comes up with a long list of propoganda websites hell bent at clouding the real science with pro-global warming propoganda, spin, half truths and downright climatic lies.

Try this website for global warming facts, not Google. http://z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Technology/index.php?showtopic=2050

If you think that my interest in the climate question is “much more political than scientific”, you just haven’t been listening. Your response is such a wrong-headed over-simplification that there’s no point at all in trying to address it.

Femack, I for one am pleased John Baird put the kybosh on a rapid transit light rail system for Ottawa because heavy (public) subsidies of public transport should have been consigned to the bin along with communism 40yrs ago!

As for ‘the Jury’s still out’ on this being the coldest winter in 2 decades please don’t concentrate just on your localle. Argentina has had the coldest winter in a century and Iraq has seen snow for the first time in 2 centuries, Europe has seen Alpne snowfalls a month earlier and here in the UK it’s bl**dy freezing.

And finally the last 8yrs have seen no average temperature increases in global temperature despite the claim CO2 levels have been at their highest in a thousand years. Oh and Antartica hasn’t changed temperature in the last 50yrs either. If you’re looking for AGW then a needle in a heystack may be a more successful pastime!

We should all be convinced now that humans could accept no blame whatever for the 14C warming, that the sun often impacts temperatures in the solar system and that Steve McIntyre’s now completely irrelevant critique of the totally outdated Mann hockey stick graph is still making the rounds on the usual websites. None of this even begins to imply that CO2 introduced into the atmosphere over the past 200 years through human activity is NOT the major culprit for the current round of warming.

As to the “mystery” of why people still worry about Exxon funding climate change denial, the best source that I can blame for this popular conception is, well, Exxon, which admitted as much last year when it announced a funding cut to the dissemblers at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (sponsors of the coming conference).

I, too, am bewildered as to why a company that has cornered the market on a finite resource would continue to try to sell that resource at an every-increasing pace - and would make no effort to diversify into energy sources that are sustainable. for an answer to that question, I fear you’ll have to knock up Exxon yourself. They don’t usually answer OUR mail.

Fern, turn your ‘credability-o-meter’ on the scientists in the IPCC. How many leaders in any climate science do you have there. Name me 3 ?
Take away the students running computer models which pretend to predict weather in 50yrs (how credable is that Fern?) when these models couldn’t predict next years annual weather trends - bursting with your ‘credability-o-meter’ isn’t it?
The IPCC 2007 Report ‘downgrades’ mans involvement with climate to 25%. So the IPCC still don’t know which part of the climate puzzle or which parts of the puzzle drive temperature most but on this ‘basis of ignorance’ they ‘predict’ mans involvement is 25%!!!
All I can suggest is why don’t these losers try their model predictions on the 3rd race at Ascot?
I don’t envy the IPCC its task but making predictions on ignorance just brings science into disrepute and into the realms of crystal ball gazing and VooDoo science.
They should refrain from ignorant predictions until they know what they’re talking about.

I have to say that as a complete layman on the topic i find the personal attacks upon the “skeptics” to be quite illuminating. Why does the AGW crowd feel the need to discreditt these people with such worthless labels as “big oil” cranks ect. If the science is so settled then why not point out the flaws in the skeptics arguments. There seems to be a growing number of alternative theory’s as well as statistical errors and proxy cherrypicking wich the skeptics have uncovered. Science has alway’s been about robust debate and a reworking of hypothesis. If the AGW crowd wants us all to go along like lemmings then they should be able to deal w/a few questions w/out resorting to insults and smear tactics. It’s not like the entire media isn’t onboard. Deal w/the skeptics w/science or risk an increasing challange by the masses who are begining to smell a rat.

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE